Pleasing God

       This past September my wife and I got to adopt our son and daughter through the foster care system. We’re extremely happy, because they’re just really good kids. I mean, my parents got stuck with me, but I got to pick my kids. Though when my wife tells my mom about the things our little boy does, she tells her, “Jeremiah was the exact same way.” So I guess it’s not so much we got to pick, but rather God placed the perfect kids into our lives.

For the last two years, our oldest girl Elisabeth, has been attending dance class over in Blythe. She had such a great time last year that we put her back in this year. This past weekend was her recital. All her hard work throughout the year was on display for literally hundreds of people. Her dance was to a song called Miss America and before her first performance I took her aside and told her, “Now you need to have a big smile, and follow your teacher’s instructions.” Then I sat down with our other foster kids and our son and waited to see her perform. She was the third dance routine to come up and as soon as those lights came on she put on the biggest smile and just performed her little heart out. When she saw us in the crowd her smile grew to the point where her eyes were almost gone.

She did a great job. After a couple of songs went by we left the building to meet up with her and my wife. When she saw me the first words out of her mouth were, “Are you proud of me daddy?” Of course I was, because she got up there and did her best. I was pleased by all that she did on that stage. Now what if she wouldn’t have done what she was supposed to? What if she was like this other little girl who walked off in the middle of the song? Would have I been proud of her then? Frankly, no I wouldn’t have been. Does that mean that I would have stopped loving her, of course not, but I wouldn’t have been pleased because she didn’t do what she was supposed to do.

You know it’s the same way with us and God. Humanity as a whole has the love of God on display through both the creation around us and the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. But we don’t necessarily have the pleasure of God, because we are not doing the things that we are supposed to do.

See the Bible shows us that the love of God is not the same as pleasing of God. First off let’s talk about God’s love. We’re going to be jumping all around the Bible today, so be prepared to move. Romans 8:38-39 is a passage that a lot of Christians memorize. It says, “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The culmination of God’s love is shown to us through the giving of Jesus the Son to the world, as is famously quoted in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

God’s love is not based on our action, our attitude or our response. It requires nothing from us and is given freely without us needing to change what we are doing. God’s love can never leave us, never turn away from us, never disown us and will never stop pursuing us no matter if we are apart of his family or far away from him.

Yet this isn’t the case with pleasing God. Whereas the love of God is constant in the lives of every person, the pleasure of God is not.

Staying in Romans, but flipping back a few verses to chapter 8 verse 8, it says, “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” The idea of the flesh that the writer is using here is the idea of rebellion against what God requires from us. So if God says to honor our parents, being in the flesh means that we are not honoring our parents. God may say that committing adultery is wrong, yet if we are in the flesh that means we are having sexual relations outside of marriage. Living in the flesh is living outside of what God wants for us and in turn we live outside the possibility of pleasing God.

In 1st Corinthians 10, the writer Paul tells the synopsis of the Israelite nation coming out of Egypt. In the story Paul talks about the things that they saw God do for them, yet in verse five Paul says, “Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness.”

Why were they not pleasing God even though they were God’s chosen nation? Because of their heart and their actions. They continued to try and rebel against God’s law, his words and the people that he sent to them to guide them on the path God had for them. Our actions and our attitude have a direct impact on if we are pleasing God or not. If we are not following what God wants, then we are not pleasing him. 

So how do we please God? We get that answer in the book of Hebrews 11:6, “And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”

The key to pleasing God is to exercise our faith. Hebrews chapter 11 is a great chapter to read and learn about the faith of some of the most important people in the Bible. One of these people is named Enoch and in verse 5 of chapter 11 it says, “By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God.”

Wouldn’t it be great to have it written about us that we are commended and we have pleased God?

So why should we want to please God, I mean isn’t it enough to always have the love of God in our lives? Well, it’s actually in the pleasing of God where first, salvation lives and second, we can experience the full greatness of God. 

Think about this, we have the love of God that makes salvation available to us, but it’s not until we respond in faith that we enter into this salvation. Paul says back in Romans 10:9-10, “Because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.”

The belief that Paul talks about is the exercising of faith that we must have in responding to the free gift of salvation God has made available to us. When we exercise this faith, God is pleased because we are doing what he has told us to do.

Secondly, when we please God we get to experience him in ways that we can’t even imagine. In exercising his faith, Noah pleased God and got to see him flood the earth. In exercising his faith, David pleased God and defeated the giant Goliath. In exercising his faith, Daniel pleased God and got to sleep with hungry lions. What would it be like if we had as our life goal to please God? What would happen?

So we know what it means to please God, we know the reasons to please God, but how do we actually do it?

There’s three steps: Step 1: Dig into the Bible; God’s word tells us what he wants from us. Step 2: Breath Prayer; talk with God about how his word needs to meet your life. Finally Step 3: Walk it; put it into action by actually doing what pleases God. That’s it. When we do these simple steps, we can please God, with the bonus of seeing God work.

My love for my son and daughter will never stop, but I enjoy them so much more when they go out of their way to please me. How much more should we live our lives to please our Father in heaven? How will you please the Father today?